Congress impeding Trump’s No. 1 job
Sheer insanity!
Trump’s most important job is to keep our country safe. Congress is making Trump’s job impossible!
First Congress refused to allow about 1 percent of the $700 billion military budget for a wall to help secure our border from the savage M13 gang, drugs and all manners of racketeers.
Now its first bipartisan effort has been to nullify Trump’s declaration of emergency.
Dr. Tom Herzog
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Conservatives just full of ‘con’
Free Press editor Cooper writes: “In the mind of the left, only one way is correct – their way, their belief, their opinion. Allowing the other side to prevail, or even to consider compromise, is unthinkable. They remind us of children on the playground who demand ‘do-overs’ until a decision goes their way, or of the child who gets a ‘no’ answer from one parent and runs immediately to the other parent in order to secure a different response.”
Really? “Us”? Cooper is either woefully lacking in self awareness or is unfamiliar with the concept of irony or projection.
His columns are typical of the intellectual dishonesty, false equivalency, and pandering to bigotry, fear and ignorance that passes for conservative “thought” today.
One thing that is correct is that “conservative” begins with “con.”
Ted Tumelaire, Signal Mountain
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Act on climate while we still have time
Here’s a point for climate change deniers to ponder:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that the last four years, 2015-2018, are the warmest on record since monitoring began in 1880. This warming trend has been associated with natural disasters around the world, including the hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding that have hit the Southeast. Raging wildfires have devastated California and, in 2016, darkened our skies here in Tennessee and Georgia.
Perhaps this trend is strictly a natural phenomenon. But this is reality, folks. Polar icecaps and mountain glaciers are melting. Warmer sea water is making hurricanes worse, and sea waters are rising to threaten coastal cities.
If these disasters are partially caused by pollution and human activity, we need to be doing something about it now, while we still can, to provide a healthy world for our children and grandchildren. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as Ben Franklin said.
Nations around the world are taking action to fight this global warming. But the policies of the Trump administration will do nothing to control climate change.
Please keep this in mind as you vote in 2020. Think about the future of your family.
Allen Chesney
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Let’s get out front, end death penalty
On March 13, the governor of California issued an executive order placing an indefinite moratorium on the implementation of death sentences. While that action is likely to be challenged in court, it reflects an inexorable historical trend toward eliminating capital punishment evident from both national and international perspectives.
Twenty of our state legislatures have already prohibited the death penalty. It has similarly been abolished by more than 130 nations, including almost all countries of the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe. The fact more than 100 death row inmates have been exonerated suggests high likelihood there have been cases of wrongful executions.
Economic studies have shown the death penalty is several times more costly to implement than life imprisonment. If each human life is rightfully viewed as holding inherent value, there would seem to be no moral justification for sanction by any government of capital punishment.
In sum, it is inevitable the death penalty eventually will be abolished throughout the United States. In that regard, we can only hope Tennessee will get on the right side of history sooner rather than later.
Patrick Lavin, Hixson